Past Events (mentioned in dispatches...)

August 2016

Eric went up and did the Straights. He dove the Cedarville, Newell Eddie, the William Young and one other wreck. He brought back some nice video which he shared at the meeting. Thanks Eric!

Larry has been active, diving the Floretta, Home and Walter B Allen as well as some anchors off of Manitowoc.

Eric and I did the Northerner in July. Decent viz was to be had. We were going to do the Island City the next day, but the green water over the bow of my boat in the outer harbor at Port Washington nixed that idea.

Eric and I also did a Fortune Pond run. The viz was a little cloudy shallow but quite good down past about 80 feet. The water temp at 20 feet was 60 degrees which made deco almost too warm. Eric brought his scooter along and towed me around to the back side of the Pond where we enjoyed the steep drop offs there. Great dive!

Yesterday I was off of work and did a shore dive off my house on Lake Michigan. I got out to 17 feet of water on a single 72 which is a pretty good feat. On the way back in I saw about a ten pound Carp swimming by. I stopped and did not breathe. The Carp circled around and we were face to face about two feet apart when I exhaled. The Carp took off like a shot! Ha. A short time later I briefly was surrounded by a large school of Alwife. A nice dive it was.

Marc told us about a search for some missing sun glasses in Big Cedar Lake. On another note we had our annual picnic in July. The lake did not cooperate this time, but a good time was had by all.

Current Events

Harrington Beach State Park shore dive. August 13th at 9:00 AM we will meet in the lower parking lot at Harrington Beach State Park to do a shore dive at the pier crib off the point in Lake Michigan. Personally I recommend bringing a wheel barrow to move your gear from the parking lot to the point. It can be a long walk! It is an interesting dive though and worth the effort. Please reply all to this email if you are joining us. If conditions are not suitable for the dive I will post a cancellation late Friday or early Saturday morning.

Future Events

Labor Day Weekend some of our members will be on Washington Island. If you would like details contact Ron Dorzynski. He and Sue will be staying near Detroit Harbor and they have a place for a fire and get together in the evenings.

Also Deco Divers is doing Munising Labor Day weekend. Divers Delight is out of the Picture and I believe they will be diving with Greg Such. Please contact Deco Divers for details. PortDecoDivers.com , 262-268-8400.

July 2016

We kicked off the July meeting with a demonstration of a DIY wet / drysuit dryer by Roland. This consisted of salvaged computer fans and PVC pipe. Looked like a winner.
Roland and Mike dove the Northerner and reported excellent viz. Mike got his new GO Pro into the water but neglected to remove the lens cap.
Larry has been busy up North. He dove the Baldwin, Gust, Hetty Taylor, Byron, Niagara and the Northerner.
TJ has of course done many dives this month. The more interesting one though was on the Mahoning where he encountered heavy surge. Most unusual.
Jim and Eric got up to the Two Rivers area and dove the Rouse Simmons and then the Great Crane wreck on the way back. Great viz on the Rouse. Probably in excess of 150 feet. Less on the crane but still very nice.back to top

June 2016

We had a nice turn out for our June meeting. We kicked it off with a presentation on dive boat etiquette from TJ, the owner of Deco Divers dive shop in Port Washington. He took the group out to his charter boat, the Little Alexandria, and did a very nice job.
Next, we discussed past dives. A busy month! Roland, Eric and Jim did a dive on the Niagara. Jim and Eric also dove the Northerner and did trips to Lake Wazee and Fortune Pond. They also dove a natural formation, a ridge, that is about half way between Port Washington and the Mahoning. Cameron reported that he attempted a shore dive on the Atlanta, but was unsuccessful in finding it. TJ said that his charter boat has been busy. He was most recently on the Mahoning and Ericís reef.back to top

May 2016

Jim started the meeting with a presentation on anchoring your boat, displaying the more common anchors and how an anchoring system is supposed to work.
Jim Driver did Wazee, Red Granite and Pearl lake. The viz at Red Granite is still pretty bad. Wazee and Pearl were okay though.
Joe checked out the Niagara and reported about 40 foot viz. Pretty decent for that wreck.
Jerry Sable dove the Oriskany off Pensacola Florida in March with H2O Below charters.
Roland and Mike dove the Airplane off Port Washington. Roland had a free flow which shortened the dive some.back to top

April 2016

A few people got in some quarry diving and some inland lake diving. The weather was still kind of nippy, so the rest of us got our tanks and regs serviced, and some were busy replacing seals.back to top

March 2016

We had our ice dive out at Big Cedar LAST month. It was well attended. Thank you Marc Weasler for being our guide on the lake.
Ken Welch sent me a dive report and here it is in itís entirety:
I just got back from Grenada and a week of diving with Aquanauts adjacent to the True Blue Resort. This was my first trip to Grenada and drift diving that is common there. The crew was great and all divers were very experienced and it was a wonderful experience. You may know one of the other divers, Jeff Shulz (2015 Buccaneer Diver of the Year). My favorite dive was the Bianca C, a 600í cruise ship that went down about 50 years ago. The most interesting sea life dive also demonstrated the superb planning of our crew; a drift dive from Dragon Bay in about 70í of water that slowly had us drift for about 55 minutes into 15í of water in the Underwater Sculpture Park and right up to where the dive boat was moored. The water varied between 78 and 81 degrees with visibility of around 70í.
Jim will be heading down to Silver Springs Florida to participate in the SEA HUNT FOREVER event. This is a recreation of the SEA HUNT television show which starred Lloyd Bridges and was on air from 1958 to 1961.
April 2nd we will be at Fortune Pond to do our annual ice dive there, if there is still ice. If there is no ice, I think we can still make that work.
The Ghost Ships festival is coming up fast as well.
Fortune Pond May 6th Ė 8th Wisconsin meets Minnesota. We will be meeting divers from Minnesota, most of which dive Vintage dive gear from the 50s and 60s. Come on up, it will be fun. Where else will you see a vintage diver, a tech diver and a rebreather diver in the water at the same time. We had that a couple years back. You never know, check it out.
Treasures of Oz will be June 18th in Port Washington. We will have a booth in upper lake park. Our mission is to talk diving with the people who attend the event. Our hours are 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. Jim will need a few volunteers to help me run the booth. You need not be there the whole day, but a couple hours would be great. It should be an easy gig and a lot of fun.
Summer picnic. We have chosen a date for the summer picnic. It will be held on June 25th . After giving the matter a great deal of thought, Jim has decided to host it. My yard is pretty ripped up, but I think we can work around that. We can nail down the details at future meetings.
We had some special guests drop by the meeting. TJ and Tish from Port Deco Divers. They are opening a new dive shop in Port Washington. They are just down the street from the Holiday Inn at 110 S. Wisconsin street, suite 1, Port Washington. It will be a fully rigged dive operation with a brick and mortar store, featuring dive gear, fills with all the modern gases, dive instruction,and a dive charter. They bought the boat Little Alexandria from Greg Such. They will offer six pack charter out of Port and they can also trailer the boat up and down the coast line where required.

February 2016

The February meeting was well attended for a winter meeting. We opened the meeting by giving the floor to one Marjie Tomter. She is the coordinator for the Treasures of Oz organization. On June 18th the Treasures of Oz folks are having an outdoor event in the Port Washington area. They would like us to set up a booth in order to discuss the local scuba diving opportunitiesí with the general public. I think we should do this. It will require a commitment from 9AM to 3PM that day. Weíll need a few volunteers to run the booth. Iím thinking two people working two hour shifts minimum, so we will need five volunteers. Iím already committed as far as Iím concerned. More is better of course. Sitting around talking diving? Not a bad gig!
As you might guess, diving was somewhat sparse in the month of January, but there was some going on. Eric P dove the Piqutte mine over in the Southwest corner of the state. He also had a rather interesting video of his exploits. Lotís of old bottles, busted off shovel handles and the like. He also did the Mermet Springs run and did two dives at the quarry.
Mike J told us of diving the skin boat off of Port Washington with Eric P and Roland C. The skin boat lies in 80 feet of water about two miles North of Port Washington. It is about 20 feet long. It is believed that this boat was once used to service some of the commercial fishing nets back in the day. Probably late 1800ís.
During the Polar Bear plunge, one of the participants lost a pair of expensive glasses. He reported the loss to the harbor master who got a hold of Mike J. Mike, Eric P, and your president did a recovery operation. Mike was first diver and found said glasses after just a few minutes searching. Polar Bear and glasses are now reunited.
Mike J. also mentioned that he was down in Florida and did some snorkeling near Key Largo. He would have preferred doing scuba, but it just didnít work out. At least he got in the water!

January 2016

The Pearl Harbor Day Dive was held on Dec 6th and is put on annually by the Neptune's dive club. This year as in most years we dove the Fish Creek harbor. The Neptune's had roughly 10 divers with the Deep Six group adding an additional 4. Water clarity was excellent in the 30' range. Air temperatures were in the mid 30's and water temps were upper 30's ... so no complaints there. For those who have not attended this event in the past, I would highly recommend it for a future dive. The Neptune's have a great group of divers that show up to have fun.... and that they do! Everyone has the option of sticking $5.00 into a kitty and the best find wins the pot. My find this year was a 15" (like new) boat propeller... didn't win the kitty, but its going on Craigslist.
There was another dive to Fish Creek on Dec 16th, I wanted to test out a new piece of equipment and it took no arm twisting at all to get Jim B to join me. My equipment worked well and Jim found a really cool bottle that he posted on our Facebook page.
Dec 12th I took a trip to Fortune Pond, water clarity was amazing!! Water temp was 42deg. It's been a real treat to be able to get in some late season diving with the warm weather we have been experiencing. I did speak with Bewabic State Park on the 4th of January... they stated that 1/3 of Fortune Pond was still open, I'm sure that it has since froze over so we can commence with our ice dives soon.

December 2015

November 2015

Jim and Eric volunteered to serve as Prez and VP for 2016.
Eric, Jim and Mike did a day trip to Fortune Pond. The air temp was a mere 35, the water temp was 42. There was no wind and plenty of sunshine which was nice. The viz was in excess of 80 feet.Coming up is the Pearl Harbor day dive in Fish Creek on December 6th, up in Door county. Meet at the Bay Side Tavern in Fish Creek at 11:00 and the dive will start in the marina at noon.Also upcoming, a possible pool dive at the Schroeder YMCA in Brown Deer for a nominal fee on February 20 or 21st for those interested.

October 2015

Eric took a trip to Cozumel and got in 6 days of great reef diving, and shared some beautiful video with us at the meeting. Jim had a few more dive recovery exercises with the Ozaukee County Dive Rescue team.back to top

September 2015

Past news: Some of us made it up to Washington Island over the Labor Day weekend for some diving at the Goodrich Docks and the Fleetwing, and some of us got in some dives at Fortune Pond, Long Lake, Pearl Lake, Haigh Quarry, and Amy Belle, and a few even got in some Lake Michigan wreck diving on the Niagara, Emba, St Albans, and the Floretta.
Upcoming: A chili contest is in the works for October 17th (Saturday). Dave is also thinking of a day trip to Door County or Haigh Quarry for the 24th and/or 31st. Details for these to be in separate emails and facebook group posts.
Ken Welch is recovering from some minor surgery to his feet, so if you know Ken send him an email or message him on facebook and wish him a speedy recovery.
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August 2015

People got some good diving in during August - Jim, Eric, Larry, Ken and Roland and Mike were diving Lake Michigan wrecks Niagara, Northerner, the Car Ferry, Willie, Dredge, Walter B. Allen, Island City, Atlanta, Rouse-Simmons, Home, Helvita, and the Advance, and Larry was also looking for some anchors outside of Manitowoc but had no luck. A few people also made an attempt to find Jim's drone but had no luck. Ron and Sue dived Crystal Lake and Sparkle Lake, Jerry and Fred dived Big Green, and Fred and Steele dived Long Lake, Marc was doing some free-diving in Big Cedar and just north of the breakwater in Port Washington, and Dave was at Fortune Pond three times practicing with his macro lens. Cameron and Brenda's daughters are taking their Open Water training now. Larry had heard of the existence of an underwater cave at Fortune Pond containing old mining equipment, and we speculated briefly about the possible locations, but no one had any definitive knowledge of any cave.back to top